Skyrocketing tuition: Is punishing expensive colleges the answer?

President Obama tries to pressure colleges into taming their wildly soaring tuition costs. Good luck with that, say dismissive critics

President Obama
(Image credit: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama put colleges and universities on notice: "If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down." College "can't be a luxury," he added, and affordable tuition is "an economic imperative" for families and the nation alike. Obama has since backed up his words with proposals, including "scorecards" that would let students better compare schools' costs and value, and continued threats to shift federal dollars away from schools that don't control costs. Should pricey schools really be punished?

Obama's plan won't work: "'Punishing' schools that don't control costs" is futile, because most rising costs have nothing to do with the colleges themselves, say Michael McPherson and Sandy Baum in the Chicago Tribune. The main cause is the decision by cash-strapped states to slash higher-ed funding. "Everyone would like a magic bullet that would dramatically reduce the cost of educating students." But the truth is, high-quality education costs money, and nobody wants to pay for it. Obama can't punish schools into changing that reality.

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